I said the next time I disappeared for a few days it would be because I was in Indiana. I didn’t lie, I just didn’t plan on what happened on Friday. I won’t be going back to Indiana for a long time.
Unfortunately I also had to resign from our TIR team (and suspend trumpet playing for the time being). Okay, so actually a lot is going to change but the good news is in a handful of weeks this should all be behind us.
Here’s the email I sent to a couple of friends; figured I might as well just copy and paste. Sorry for the extra pictures but thought I’d throw some narration in.
Where to start…
Well, he was climbing a rope ladder at pre-school. He wasn’t far off the ground. A friend called out to him, he turned out to see who it was and lost his balance. His foot got caught in the rope and it torqued his leg. The sheer force of the foot being caught up in the air in the netting combined with his head headed toward the ground from the force of gravity…it literally split his femur (thigh bone) from where it attaches at the knee all the way to the hip – one long vertical break.
That was 9:15 in the morning Friday. They called me in a panic; we got him to the ER at the hospital just down the road, who knew it was broken before they even did an x-ray. Once they confirmed it, it was obvious he needed to go to Texas Children’s so he and I headed down there via ambulance and my husband picked our daughter up early from school since we didn’t know when we might be where at that point. Here we are in the ambulance on the ride to the med center. That’s right…I had my wits about me enough to remember to use my camera phone! Sorry these are a little grainy, but that’s why.
He sat in the ER at TCH getting tested, morpine via IV, etc. until 7pm when we were lucky to get a regular room on the orthopedic floor that night (Friday). They had 25 surgeries ahead of him so I had the choice of emergency surgery at 4am or scheduled surgery at 8am on Saturday. My logical brain kicked in for those 30 seconds and said this is gonna be huge bucks but I bet I can save five grand if I sign up for regular surgery with that 4 hour delay.
He was so drugged up that honestly I don’t think it made any difference at that point since they had at least put a splint on him at the first ER. (This next one is one I took at TCH though; I know that because I remember cutting off his underwear in ER there and getting a pull-up on him).
My husband went back home with our daughter that night and I slept in bed with him. Sort of – how about if I say we were both horizontal in the bed. There wasn’t any sleeping going on; what should’ve made him drowsy instead had him wired.
So at 8am they got him to the operating room which really we only needed so they could re-set his leg under anesthesia; it was not surgery so no pins, etc. (thank goodness!!!). By 10am we were with him in recovery and by noon we were back to his room. He surely will crash and burn tonight; it was well after midnight again Saturday night when I think he fell asleep (who knows; I passed out from exhaustion next to him) and once they took vitals at 4:15am this morning he was up and ready to go for the day, and he’s been awake ever since. This next one I call his morphine look; that’s why he was smiling!
Crazy. So it will be on him 8 weeks. We’ve already been told it will be another couple of weeks after that before he’s confident to really walk again so my estimated guess is more like 10-12 weeks down the road. It’s all temporary however long it ends up being so it’s all good. He’s not happy about being back in a diaper (you do the math on how they manage bodily functions in the equation) but it is what it is.
You should see how we got him home; he put on this seat belt harness thing and then laid down flat, lengthwise in the back of the car. There’s not enough room for 4 of us in either car now so that should be the really interesting part for all of this as there is no way for all of us to be together at any given time if we’re going somewhere.
Crazy. Did I say that? Here’s our mode of transportation for a while. I am eternally grateful to my SIL who dropped everything to pick up our daughter on Saturday, and then another friend who let her spend the night (at 10:30 after they found out the hard way the toll road was closed due to high water) last night. Another good friend must have a lot of experience with emergencies because she was over this afternoon in no time with homemade sloppy joes with everything you could imagine to go with it. And her own kids came with her to decorate his room. I was so tired I probably didn’t make any sense to her but once we sat down to dinner, I realized that was probably the best meal I’ve ever had in my entire life!
